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My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Family's Past
In a remote corner of the world, forgotten for nearly three thousand years, lived an enclave of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers and humble peddlers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born.
Yona's son Ariel grew up in Los Angeles, where Yona had become an esteemed professor, dedicating his career to preserving his people’s traditions. Ariel wanted nothing to do with his father’s strange immigrant heritage—until he had a son of his own.
Ariel Sabar brings to life the ancient town of Zakho, discovering his family’s place in the sweeping saga of Middle-Eastern history. This powerful book is an improbable story of tolerance and hope set in what today is the very center of the world’s attention.
Yona's son Ariel grew up in Los Angeles, where Yona had become an esteemed professor, dedicating his career to preserving his people’s traditions. Ariel wanted nothing to do with his father’s strange immigrant heritage—until he had a son of his own.
Ariel Sabar brings to life the ancient town of Zakho, discovering his family’s place in the sweeping saga of Middle-Eastern history. This powerful book is an improbable story of tolerance and hope set in what today is the very center of the world’s attention.
370 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 21, 2008
608 people are currently reading
4339 people want to read
About the author
Ariel Sabar
5 books71 followersAriel Sabar won the National Book Critics Circle Award for his debut book, My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for his Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq (2008). His second book, Heart of the City (2011), was called a "beguiling romp" (New York Times) and an "engaging, moving and lively read" (Toronto Star). His Kindle Single, The Outsider: The Life and Times of Roger Barker (2014), was a best-selling nonfiction short. His latest book—Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife—was published to rave reviews in August 2020.
Sabar is also an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones, and This American Life, among many other places. He has reported from Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.
Sabar graduated magna cum laude from Brown University. He taught creative writing at The George Washington University and has lectured about his books and magazine stories at Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, the Royal Geographical Society of London, and Yale University, where he was a Poynter Fellow in Journalism. He has been interviewed about his books and articles on NPR, PBS NewsHour, and the BBC World Service.
Sabar is also an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones, and This American Life, among many other places. He has reported from Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.
Sabar graduated magna cum laude from Brown University. He taught creative writing at The George Washington University and has lectured about his books and magazine stories at Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, the Royal Geographical Society of London, and Yale University, where he was a Poynter Fellow in Journalism. He has been interviewed about his books and articles on NPR, PBS NewsHour, and the BBC World Service.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 448 reviews
June 2, 2022
This book is a gem. I turned each page feeling slightly elated. Aramaic from Kurdistan to the X-files. A journey.
The author's father, the subject of the book is a professor in UCLA. He spent his early years on a tiny river island in Kurdistan. This river is mentioned in the Bible as when the Jews went out to Mesopotamia (Iraq) 2,700 years ago. The lingua franca of the Middle East for a thousand years was Aramaic. This is a milennia before the Arabs conquered it and imposed Arabic, a daughter language of Aramaic itself. Aramaic still lives in little pockets of Iraq, although ISIS are doing their best to kill off the last Assyrians - the name for Christians there and Mandeans near Mosul.
Yona Sabar was the last Jewish boy to be barmitvah in the town of Zahko, Iraqi Kurdistan. The Jews had lived in harmony with the Muslims for more than a millenia, but with the coming of the State of Israel in 1947, the Jews became an extension of Israel to the Muslims and life there became untenable for them. It's not the only place where people known as individuals as well as a community have suddenly become the enemy and subjected to extreme privations and even death. Think of Germany, Poland and Austria before and during the Holocaust. Yet in other countries, such as Albania, the people's political sympathies might lie elsewhere but they zealously protect their Jewish neighbours. Why are some people identifying as the same religion and even same politics so full of love and others so full of hatred towards people they know as individuals so well?
As one of the few known speakers of Aramaic in the US, Professor Yona Sabar has been called on by Hollywood on quite a few occasions. He has contributed lines of Aramaic to many films and shows, including George Burns' Oh God!, The X-Files and Curb Your Enthusiasm, although not The Passion of the Christ. Mel Gibson wanted only a Christian to do it.
It's really interesting to read of Iraqi Kurdistan in times only recently gone by where people still lived a stye of life more ancient than modern and speak a language that survives, just, from biblical times.
The author's father, the subject of the book is a professor in UCLA. He spent his early years on a tiny river island in Kurdistan. This river is mentioned in the Bible as when the Jews went out to Mesopotamia (Iraq) 2,700 years ago. The lingua franca of the Middle East for a thousand years was Aramaic. This is a milennia before the Arabs conquered it and imposed Arabic, a daughter language of Aramaic itself. Aramaic still lives in little pockets of Iraq, although ISIS are doing their best to kill off the last Assyrians - the name for Christians there and Mandeans near Mosul.
Yona Sabar was the last Jewish boy to be barmitvah in the town of Zahko, Iraqi Kurdistan. The Jews had lived in harmony with the Muslims for more than a millenia, but with the coming of the State of Israel in 1947, the Jews became an extension of Israel to the Muslims and life there became untenable for them. It's not the only place where people known as individuals as well as a community have suddenly become the enemy and subjected to extreme privations and even death. Think of Germany, Poland and Austria before and during the Holocaust. Yet in other countries, such as Albania, the people's political sympathies might lie elsewhere but they zealously protect their Jewish neighbours. Why are some people identifying as the same religion and even same politics so full of love and others so full of hatred towards people they know as individuals so well?
As one of the few known speakers of Aramaic in the US, Professor Yona Sabar has been called on by Hollywood on quite a few occasions. He has contributed lines of Aramaic to many films and shows, including George Burns' Oh God!, The X-Files and Curb Your Enthusiasm, although not The Passion of the Christ. Mel Gibson wanted only a Christian to do it.
It's really interesting to read of Iraqi Kurdistan in times only recently gone by where people still lived a stye of life more ancient than modern and speak a language that survives, just, from biblical times.
May 4, 2021
The Lost Tribe Loses the Plot
A moving story, as so often the case, of Jews dispossessed and exiled. In this instance from the remote region of Kurdish Iraq. There is no question that this story of personal travail is worth telling and worth reading. Among other things, it is a story which provides essential background for the recent rise of Islamic State and its persecution of Kurdish Christians in a re-play of what the Iraqi government did to the Kurdish Jews almost seven decades ago.
But Sabar’s main theme isn’t personal, despite his use of his own family on which to paint a picture of what he himself refers to as one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. His primary point is a cultural one. The book is a sort of a conciliatory homage to his father who, removed from the ancestral home of the Kurdistan Jews as a child, is one of a disappearing remnant of this ancient fragment of the Jewish Dispersion directed by the Assyrian empire in the 8th century BCE. His father is, understandably, obsessed by his heritage: “My father had staked his life on the notion that the past mattered more than anything.” For him, the lost culture of Kurdistani Judaism has an intensely emotional and sentimental import: “The past felt safe, like a hiding place.” He devotes his life to the documentation of the Neo-Aramaic dialect that was all but lost in the mass emigration. Again, from a personal perspective, this is a not unreasonable response to traumatic dislocation. But the subject of the book isn’t his father, it is the culture in which this arcane dialect persisted and to which his father has devoted his adult life to remembering.
What kind of culture was this? Certainly beyond primitive, beyond simple patriarchy. It was a savage, uneducated, feudal culture of subsistence, not one of arts or technology or social graces or even modest civilisation. It was a culture in which not only was a boy-child valued infinitely over a girl (despite a long-term decline in population), but one in which an infant was given away to a nomadic wet-nurse whom no one knew, and who was not pursued when she didn’t return the child as per agreement merely because her father was not so inclined to postpone pressing business engagements. Subsequently he cavalierly risked his sons in his smuggling operations. This was apparently a culture based not on personal, family, tribal, or religious loyalty, but solely on the prospects for trade, both legal and illegal. Its brutality, necessitated in part by the severe physical environment in which it existed, was made an order of magnitude more brutal by the reduction of human relationships to their functional usefulness in maintaining the dominance of males. Think of the poverty of Dickensian London overlaid with the social barbarity of the barrios of Sao Paulo, and the Maoist destruction of family feeling in the Cultural Revolution. This is the world of Kurdish Jews in the 1930’s and 40’s as portrayed by Sabar - verging itself on tragedy in its very existence.
Why then should one be tempted to mourn the passage of such a culture? Sabar’s sentimental quest for his roots as a mode of reconciliation with his father is understandable. But remarkable as is the survival of a remote Jewish enclave for 2700 years, its voluntary assimilation into the modern world, principally the modern world of Israeli Judaism, is hardly a profound tragedy. The life of a Kurdish Jew was no idyll. Viewed as an historical relic, the loss of this remnant of the Assyrian-ordered diaspora and its oral traditions is perhaps of somewhat less significance than the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddha of Bamiyan. Much of the oral tradition could at least be recorded for posterity unlike the ancient statue which is irrecoverable. Viewed as the rescue of a group of impoverished, disadvantaged, illiterate, and hopelessly dying human beings, this same loss can only be viewed as a successful and fortunate work of mercy.
There was however one major characteristic of this culture worth saving: its religious tolerance. The isolation of the Kurdish region insulated local Jews, Muslims, Christians and others from the religious ideologies promoted elsewhere - from pan Arab Islam to Zionist Judaism to Evangelical Christianity. Whatever the level of patriarchal brutality existing in any of the Kurdish religious groups, they all had a remarkable degree of mutual respect for tradition and custom according to Sabar. Muslims, for example, routinely carried out sabbath-day tasks forbidden to Jews while Jews refrained from smoking during Ramadan. He describes a sort of equivalent to the Iberian Golden Age of tolerance and civil assistance, without of course the intellectual component. This amicability was destroyed not by Dominican religious agitprop of course but simply by improvement in communications with the ideologically enmeshed world. Having been touched by religious and nationalist propaganda and by the increased political interest in that part of the globe, there was no way inter-religious relations could remain stable after the Second World War.
Nevertheless, despite this apparently accidental, and perhaps incidental, religious tolerance, it is difficult to conceive of the conditions in which Kurdish Jews existed to be, as the title suggests, in any way paradise-like. Paradise as a sentimental conceit certainly but not as any ground-truth. No, as a memoir of personal displacement and courageous re-establishment, the book works. As a memorial to a lost culture whose contribution to the world will be missed, it is an inevitable failure.
A moving story, as so often the case, of Jews dispossessed and exiled. In this instance from the remote region of Kurdish Iraq. There is no question that this story of personal travail is worth telling and worth reading. Among other things, it is a story which provides essential background for the recent rise of Islamic State and its persecution of Kurdish Christians in a re-play of what the Iraqi government did to the Kurdish Jews almost seven decades ago.
But Sabar’s main theme isn’t personal, despite his use of his own family on which to paint a picture of what he himself refers to as one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. His primary point is a cultural one. The book is a sort of a conciliatory homage to his father who, removed from the ancestral home of the Kurdistan Jews as a child, is one of a disappearing remnant of this ancient fragment of the Jewish Dispersion directed by the Assyrian empire in the 8th century BCE. His father is, understandably, obsessed by his heritage: “My father had staked his life on the notion that the past mattered more than anything.” For him, the lost culture of Kurdistani Judaism has an intensely emotional and sentimental import: “The past felt safe, like a hiding place.” He devotes his life to the documentation of the Neo-Aramaic dialect that was all but lost in the mass emigration. Again, from a personal perspective, this is a not unreasonable response to traumatic dislocation. But the subject of the book isn’t his father, it is the culture in which this arcane dialect persisted and to which his father has devoted his adult life to remembering.
What kind of culture was this? Certainly beyond primitive, beyond simple patriarchy. It was a savage, uneducated, feudal culture of subsistence, not one of arts or technology or social graces or even modest civilisation. It was a culture in which not only was a boy-child valued infinitely over a girl (despite a long-term decline in population), but one in which an infant was given away to a nomadic wet-nurse whom no one knew, and who was not pursued when she didn’t return the child as per agreement merely because her father was not so inclined to postpone pressing business engagements. Subsequently he cavalierly risked his sons in his smuggling operations. This was apparently a culture based not on personal, family, tribal, or religious loyalty, but solely on the prospects for trade, both legal and illegal. Its brutality, necessitated in part by the severe physical environment in which it existed, was made an order of magnitude more brutal by the reduction of human relationships to their functional usefulness in maintaining the dominance of males. Think of the poverty of Dickensian London overlaid with the social barbarity of the barrios of Sao Paulo, and the Maoist destruction of family feeling in the Cultural Revolution. This is the world of Kurdish Jews in the 1930’s and 40’s as portrayed by Sabar - verging itself on tragedy in its very existence.
Why then should one be tempted to mourn the passage of such a culture? Sabar’s sentimental quest for his roots as a mode of reconciliation with his father is understandable. But remarkable as is the survival of a remote Jewish enclave for 2700 years, its voluntary assimilation into the modern world, principally the modern world of Israeli Judaism, is hardly a profound tragedy. The life of a Kurdish Jew was no idyll. Viewed as an historical relic, the loss of this remnant of the Assyrian-ordered diaspora and its oral traditions is perhaps of somewhat less significance than the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddha of Bamiyan. Much of the oral tradition could at least be recorded for posterity unlike the ancient statue which is irrecoverable. Viewed as the rescue of a group of impoverished, disadvantaged, illiterate, and hopelessly dying human beings, this same loss can only be viewed as a successful and fortunate work of mercy.
There was however one major characteristic of this culture worth saving: its religious tolerance. The isolation of the Kurdish region insulated local Jews, Muslims, Christians and others from the religious ideologies promoted elsewhere - from pan Arab Islam to Zionist Judaism to Evangelical Christianity. Whatever the level of patriarchal brutality existing in any of the Kurdish religious groups, they all had a remarkable degree of mutual respect for tradition and custom according to Sabar. Muslims, for example, routinely carried out sabbath-day tasks forbidden to Jews while Jews refrained from smoking during Ramadan. He describes a sort of equivalent to the Iberian Golden Age of tolerance and civil assistance, without of course the intellectual component. This amicability was destroyed not by Dominican religious agitprop of course but simply by improvement in communications with the ideologically enmeshed world. Having been touched by religious and nationalist propaganda and by the increased political interest in that part of the globe, there was no way inter-religious relations could remain stable after the Second World War.
Nevertheless, despite this apparently accidental, and perhaps incidental, religious tolerance, it is difficult to conceive of the conditions in which Kurdish Jews existed to be, as the title suggests, in any way paradise-like. Paradise as a sentimental conceit certainly but not as any ground-truth. No, as a memoir of personal displacement and courageous re-establishment, the book works. As a memorial to a lost culture whose contribution to the world will be missed, it is an inevitable failure.
January 1, 2023
Greetings to all my Goodreads friends. I hope 2023 finds you all well. For the last number of years I have set my Goodreads challenge to one book and proceeded to finish one on January 1, setting myself up for a year of pressure free reading. It has become all the more important as I have transitioned back to working full time over the last few years, putting reading time at a premium. This year, I must admit, I had started to reread a book a week ago with the intention of finishing it before the clock struck midnight, but family movie night got in the way. That is another wrinkle to 2022 that has taken away from reading but if it means spending more time with my teenaged daughters, I will take it. With only sixty pages left, I easily finished My Father’s Paradise this morning, making it my first book read in 2023. And if family movie night connects me to my kids, then Ariel Sabar’s quest to uncover his father’s past linked the generations of his family. The fact that I have been studying languages over the last few years made this more poignant and meaningful the second time read.
Aramaic is a language I know today only because it is the language of the Kaddish pray and the Ketubah (Jewish marriage contract). Learned rabbinical students study the language only to be able to read and analyze Rabbinic texts. That is the Aramaic of the Orthodox Jewish world today. For 2700 years, however, Kurdish Jews in Northern Iraqi outposts conversed in Aramaic. It was their vernacular language, much like Yiddish is for their Ashkenazic counterparts: a Jewish language that set Jews apart from their neighbors. The Beh Sabagha family lived in Zahko for centuries. They were dyers of clothes, the name literally meaning son of a dyer. The family was among the most respected of their community, and Muslims respected them, allowing the Muslim and Jewish communities of Zakho to flourish in harmony for centuries. This is the small town where Ariel Sabar’s father Yona Ben Sabagha was born, removed from any auspices of the outside world, the self contained neighborhood all he knew. The son of Rachamim the dyer and grandson of Ephraim the Torah scholar, Yona appeared to have a bright future. His mother tongue was Aramaic.
The symbiosis between Jew and Muslim changed for the Jews of Northern Iraq with the formation of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948. All of a sudden, Jews were labeled as enemies of a country that was all they knew. It took political dealing from various sources, and by 1951 nearly the entire Jewish population of Iraq had been airlifted to Israel. Among them was the entire Jewish community of Zahko, extended Beh Sabagha family among them. Early Israeli politics favored Ashkenazic people, especially those who had survived the Holocaust. The 1951 law of return allowed any Jew from around the globe to make Aliyah to Israel, but the social hierarchy still favored the Ashkenazi. The Ben Sabagha clan had been respected in Iraq, but in Israel they were impoverished and looked down upon; Ana Kurdi being a favored epithet directed at the immigrants. The future generation, Yona, his siblings, and friends would have to be bread winners by day and students by night if they were to uplift the Kurdish community beyond the slums and bottom of the social totem pole. Many of these boys became successful, self-made people, uplifting their families. Their parents and grandparents, on the other hand, clung to the Kurdish traditions of the past, one of those being Aramaic.
Ben Sabagha became Sabagh and then eventually Sabar, a word play on sabra, meaning a prickly orange fruit used to categorize native Israelis. Having won a scholarship to Hebrew university, young Yona Sabar was encouraged to go into linguistics, and more specifically to study his native tongue that was in danger of dying. Other than Jewish Kurds, no one speaks Aramaic anymore. Sabar eventually won a scholarship to Yale and earned a PhD on the 2700 year history of Aramaic as a spoken language. He would parlay the children’s rhymes and vernacular he heard as a child into a long, distinguished career as a professor in a budding field: Neo-Aramaic as a Near Eastern language, distinguished from the other languages in the same tree. While other scholars viewed the language from a linguistic perspective only, Aramaic is Yona Sabar’s past, present, and future, and a gift to future generations of his family. Although an anachronism living in 1980s California, Yona Sabar was a gift to the future, as realized by his son later in life.
My mother first alerted me to this book over ten years ago because she figured that I studied languages and would find it interested. My husband, who is an immigrant, found it more fascinating than I did at the time, and even remembered the title when I told him I was rereading it. Ten years ago, I was most aggravated that Ariel Sabar, a name that sounds as Israeli as they come, would marry a non Jew, despite researching his family’s past, and spending summers of his life with his family in Israel. I tried to put that aside because the language aspect of the book- how languages develop over time- was and is fascinating to me. I try to reread favorite books every five to ten years or so, and, sure enough, I did gleam more this second time around. For starters, I study languages for fun. In addition to the Spanish and Portuguese that I have studied most of my life, I took on learning the Yiddish that my family spoke before they left Europe over one hundred years ago. Now my son reads it fluently so at least I have gained some understanding of what he studies without him having to translate. Additionally, I started learning both Russian and Italian, out of interest. Yona Sabar’s career as a linguist, although he would describe himself as a simple person, is enlightening to me, and I am glad I took the time to read his story a second time.
I have since read Ariel Sabar’s other works and view him as a prolific nonfiction writer. My Father’s Paradise was his first full length book. In researching, he even traveled to Zahko with his father, cementing their relationship that had been strained over the years. A book that discusses links in a family history as well as describing linguistics in the vernacular is gold to me. Although split infinitives is not most people’s idea of fun, my eyes light up when reading about them or when trying to translate a sentence in a non native language. This has been Yona Sabar’s life, and he got to research his native tongue as well as teach it to younger generations. Like the sabra, Yona Sabar’s life has been prickly with a sweet interior. I am fortunate to have been able to experience his life through his son’s words for a second time.
And now my 2023 reading challenge is “complete.”
5 stars
Aramaic is a language I know today only because it is the language of the Kaddish pray and the Ketubah (Jewish marriage contract). Learned rabbinical students study the language only to be able to read and analyze Rabbinic texts. That is the Aramaic of the Orthodox Jewish world today. For 2700 years, however, Kurdish Jews in Northern Iraqi outposts conversed in Aramaic. It was their vernacular language, much like Yiddish is for their Ashkenazic counterparts: a Jewish language that set Jews apart from their neighbors. The Beh Sabagha family lived in Zahko for centuries. They were dyers of clothes, the name literally meaning son of a dyer. The family was among the most respected of their community, and Muslims respected them, allowing the Muslim and Jewish communities of Zakho to flourish in harmony for centuries. This is the small town where Ariel Sabar’s father Yona Ben Sabagha was born, removed from any auspices of the outside world, the self contained neighborhood all he knew. The son of Rachamim the dyer and grandson of Ephraim the Torah scholar, Yona appeared to have a bright future. His mother tongue was Aramaic.
The symbiosis between Jew and Muslim changed for the Jews of Northern Iraq with the formation of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948. All of a sudden, Jews were labeled as enemies of a country that was all they knew. It took political dealing from various sources, and by 1951 nearly the entire Jewish population of Iraq had been airlifted to Israel. Among them was the entire Jewish community of Zahko, extended Beh Sabagha family among them. Early Israeli politics favored Ashkenazic people, especially those who had survived the Holocaust. The 1951 law of return allowed any Jew from around the globe to make Aliyah to Israel, but the social hierarchy still favored the Ashkenazi. The Ben Sabagha clan had been respected in Iraq, but in Israel they were impoverished and looked down upon; Ana Kurdi being a favored epithet directed at the immigrants. The future generation, Yona, his siblings, and friends would have to be bread winners by day and students by night if they were to uplift the Kurdish community beyond the slums and bottom of the social totem pole. Many of these boys became successful, self-made people, uplifting their families. Their parents and grandparents, on the other hand, clung to the Kurdish traditions of the past, one of those being Aramaic.
Ben Sabagha became Sabagh and then eventually Sabar, a word play on sabra, meaning a prickly orange fruit used to categorize native Israelis. Having won a scholarship to Hebrew university, young Yona Sabar was encouraged to go into linguistics, and more specifically to study his native tongue that was in danger of dying. Other than Jewish Kurds, no one speaks Aramaic anymore. Sabar eventually won a scholarship to Yale and earned a PhD on the 2700 year history of Aramaic as a spoken language. He would parlay the children’s rhymes and vernacular he heard as a child into a long, distinguished career as a professor in a budding field: Neo-Aramaic as a Near Eastern language, distinguished from the other languages in the same tree. While other scholars viewed the language from a linguistic perspective only, Aramaic is Yona Sabar’s past, present, and future, and a gift to future generations of his family. Although an anachronism living in 1980s California, Yona Sabar was a gift to the future, as realized by his son later in life.
My mother first alerted me to this book over ten years ago because she figured that I studied languages and would find it interested. My husband, who is an immigrant, found it more fascinating than I did at the time, and even remembered the title when I told him I was rereading it. Ten years ago, I was most aggravated that Ariel Sabar, a name that sounds as Israeli as they come, would marry a non Jew, despite researching his family’s past, and spending summers of his life with his family in Israel. I tried to put that aside because the language aspect of the book- how languages develop over time- was and is fascinating to me. I try to reread favorite books every five to ten years or so, and, sure enough, I did gleam more this second time around. For starters, I study languages for fun. In addition to the Spanish and Portuguese that I have studied most of my life, I took on learning the Yiddish that my family spoke before they left Europe over one hundred years ago. Now my son reads it fluently so at least I have gained some understanding of what he studies without him having to translate. Additionally, I started learning both Russian and Italian, out of interest. Yona Sabar’s career as a linguist, although he would describe himself as a simple person, is enlightening to me, and I am glad I took the time to read his story a second time.
I have since read Ariel Sabar’s other works and view him as a prolific nonfiction writer. My Father’s Paradise was his first full length book. In researching, he even traveled to Zahko with his father, cementing their relationship that had been strained over the years. A book that discusses links in a family history as well as describing linguistics in the vernacular is gold to me. Although split infinitives is not most people’s idea of fun, my eyes light up when reading about them or when trying to translate a sentence in a non native language. This has been Yona Sabar’s life, and he got to research his native tongue as well as teach it to younger generations. Like the sabra, Yona Sabar’s life has been prickly with a sweet interior. I am fortunate to have been able to experience his life through his son’s words for a second time.
And now my 2023 reading challenge is “complete.”
5 stars
January 30, 2022
This is an outstandingly good book, that is mainly a family history but also a history of the Jews of Kurdistan, and a reflection on the nature of culture, ancestry and identity. I listened to the audio version, superbly narrated by Fajer Al-Kaisi, who is described as a Canadian actor of Iraqi heritage.
The author’s father, Yona Sabar, was born in 1938 in the town of Zakho, in Iraqi Kurdistan. Jewish people had lived in Zakho since 722BCE, after being deported from their homeland by the Assyrian Emperor Tiglath-pileser III. They spoke the Aramaic language, which was once predominant in the Middle East but which was largely replaced by Arabic, clinging on only among remote Jewish and Christian communities. Yona was the last boy to have his Bar Mitzvah in Zakho, days before the local Jews were evacuated to Israel in 1951, an event that brought an end to a culture that had persisted for almost 2,700 years.
The early part of the book provides us with a fascinating portrait of life in early 20th century Zakho, a world of folk tradition pervaded by religious mysticism. The author doesn’t overly romanticise though. The people of Zahko were illiterate and poverty-stricken, and it was a culture that valued boys far more than girls. Things remained difficult for the Zakho people when they moved to Israel. The young state struggled to absorb the huge numbers of immigrants it received, and the book suggests there was an unspoken hierarchy. Immigrants from Muslim-majority countries were regarded as backward, but even amongst Middle-Eastern Jews there was a hierarchy, with the Kurds at the bottom.
Yona Sabar was intellectually talented, but his specific path in life came about through the accident of his native language being Aramaic. A professor of Hebrew at Jerusalem University asked him to carry out an exercise in linking Aramaic and Hebrew words, something which eventually led him to gain a Ph.D from Yale University and to become a professor at UCLA. Once again he experienced the displacement of moving to a new country, and the American born author describes his own struggles with identity, growing up with an immigrant father who came from a place that seemed impossibly remote, in both time and place.
I wouldn’t have thought the story of someone else’s family would have grabbed my interest as much as this did, but I was riveted whenever I had a chance to listen. It helps that, in my opinion, the book is superbly written. Really, really, excellent.
The author’s father, Yona Sabar, was born in 1938 in the town of Zakho, in Iraqi Kurdistan. Jewish people had lived in Zakho since 722BCE, after being deported from their homeland by the Assyrian Emperor Tiglath-pileser III. They spoke the Aramaic language, which was once predominant in the Middle East but which was largely replaced by Arabic, clinging on only among remote Jewish and Christian communities. Yona was the last boy to have his Bar Mitzvah in Zakho, days before the local Jews were evacuated to Israel in 1951, an event that brought an end to a culture that had persisted for almost 2,700 years.
The early part of the book provides us with a fascinating portrait of life in early 20th century Zakho, a world of folk tradition pervaded by religious mysticism. The author doesn’t overly romanticise though. The people of Zahko were illiterate and poverty-stricken, and it was a culture that valued boys far more than girls. Things remained difficult for the Zakho people when they moved to Israel. The young state struggled to absorb the huge numbers of immigrants it received, and the book suggests there was an unspoken hierarchy. Immigrants from Muslim-majority countries were regarded as backward, but even amongst Middle-Eastern Jews there was a hierarchy, with the Kurds at the bottom.
Yona Sabar was intellectually talented, but his specific path in life came about through the accident of his native language being Aramaic. A professor of Hebrew at Jerusalem University asked him to carry out an exercise in linking Aramaic and Hebrew words, something which eventually led him to gain a Ph.D from Yale University and to become a professor at UCLA. Once again he experienced the displacement of moving to a new country, and the American born author describes his own struggles with identity, growing up with an immigrant father who came from a place that seemed impossibly remote, in both time and place.
I wouldn’t have thought the story of someone else’s family would have grabbed my interest as much as this did, but I was riveted whenever I had a chance to listen. It helps that, in my opinion, the book is superbly written. Really, really, excellent.
November 13, 2019
Finished - wow! What can I say? I guess first of all I want to (((HUG))) GR for existing, for showing me all these MARVELOUS books!!!! OK, about the book. Well, how does the relationship between father and son(author) end up. It ends up right where I wanted it to end up, but you will have to read the book to find this out! It is summed up in the first three sentences on page 322 in the last chapter. Here is one last interesting quote: "There is a counterpoint to the familiar immigrant story of opportunities won: It is the story, less often told, of cultures lost." Yes, cultures are at least watered-down, but if we are aware of this danger maybe we can take steps to help preserve cultures. Furthermore, I believe that we pass on to our children and they to their own children the cultures of our ancestors. Family customs have a tendency to stick, although perhaps not in exactly the original form. This is evident in the author's family, in mine too, and I think in all families where they have emigrated to a new land. I think for many of us we learn to like some things about the new country and also like other things about the country we have left. We pass on these memories to our children. How horrible the world would be if it lacked diversity. What should I read now....... So exciting to start a new book!
Through page 272: I MUST add this too! Father and son are at Cambridge taking part at a high level academic conference on the Neo-Aramaic Language. The author MUST be beginning to see the the wonderful character of his father. His father is one of the few of academia who can talk so we all understand, who can make us laugh and feel passion for a subject, who brings all the scientific gibberish back to plain, straight, clear understandable words that ALL understand.
Through page 269: What is it like to go back to a place where you grew up? Not many of us live in the same place all our lives, so this is a question that speaks to us all. I have found that the man-made things, yes, they change. Nevertheless you recognize the "land". The hills the trees. Somehow the landscape remains and you can reconnect. This is easier in the country rather than in urban areas where everything is practically gone, but teeny bits remain even there. Also, is going back a disappointment? Another topic in this part of the book concerns the author's attempt to reconnect with his father. Quite simply their relationship was not at all good. They were up to that point very different people. When the author had a son himself he started understanding what it is like - "to be a father", to love a child irregardless of differences. Maybe it is pure biology, but you just do love your children. All of them, and they too are usually very different from each other! That is where I am now. I do not know where this will end up for these two people, the author and his father.
Through page 209: Studying at Yale the author very well captures how it must feel to fall into east coast American ivy league life, having first grown up in a a remote Kurdish village. Even life in bustling Jerusalem has no comparison to life at Yale. I have read lots of immigrant memoirs, but this is one of the best, something I clearly recognized.
Through page 176: The family emigrates to Israel. An analysis of the Jewish melting-pot is fascinating:
"Itzhak Ben-Zvi and David Ben-Gurion were sometimes called 'the twins'....Ben-Gurion as Prime Minister, Ben-Zvi as President. Yet, on the question of Israel's Middle Eastern immigrants, they never saw eye to eye. To Ben-Gurion Israel was a melting-pot. ....Ben Zvi was perhaps the only man in Israel with the stripes to challenge the melting-pot theory....For Ben-Zvi, the truth about Jews' common past could best be glimpsed, not through an erasure of differences, but through the light refracted by its many subcultures."
Or on page 69 and 70 about the great Muslim, Kurdish warrior general Saladin, a champion of jihad born in Tikrit 1138, who repelled the invasion of King Richard the Lionhearted and his Crusaders:
"Yet Saladin is remembered today less for his military cunning than his chivalry. When Richard's horse was killed, Saladin sent two replacements. When Richard fell ill after his victory at Jaffa, Saladin sent a sorbet of fruit and snow to cool his rival's fever. Christian crusaders had slaughtered thousands of Muslim prisoners, but after his victory, Saladin let Christians exit Jerusalem unmolested."
There is so much here of interest! Religious extremism was rare. Is that the key difference? History moves in cycles, but can't we lessen the waves' peaks and troughs?
Through page 69: I love this, so I am sharing a bit with you. Lots of fascinating history dating from 2700 years ago up to what happened to Iraq in WW1 and during WW2. Absolutely fascinating. If history isn't your thing it is still marvelous b/c family life in the isolated mountain village of Zakno constitutes the dominant thread. There are photos of the people and the place and a map - hurray for books with maps, although it is a bit rudimentary. I suck up hearing about how the Jews, Christians and Muslims ENJOYED each other's company:
"Seclusion (in the isolated mountain village) bred fraternity: Muslim, Jew and Christian suffered alike through the region's cruel cycles of flood, famine and Kurdish tribal bloodshed. They prospered alike when the soil yielded bumper crops of wheat, gall nuts and fragrant tobacco. In important ways they were Kurds first and Muslims, Christians and Jews second. Muslims sent Jews bread and milk as gifts after Passover. They ate matzoh, which they called "holiday bread" as a delicacy. They sent their Jewish neighbors hot tea during the Sabbath, when Jews were forbidden to light fires. Some Muslims even asked the synagogue to wake them early in the days before Yom Kippur . They viewed early rising on Jewish days of penitence as bringing good luck. And the Jews paid back the respect, forgoing cigarettes , for instance, during the holy month of Ramadan , when Muslims may not smoke."
Can't we learn from this? In Baghdad, at this time, riots and fighting between Muslims and Jews were violent and constant.
Through page 28: I am totally loving this. Although predominantly non-fiction, the uthor is a true story teller. His grandfather is described, when he is first presented to his future bride, who is only 13, as: "a short man in a shalla u-shappiksa of such brightly colored stripes that Miryam had to resist twin impulses - the first to giggle, the second to flee. The traditional billowy trousers and short sheep's-wool jacket radiated every color of the rainbow. Someone, it seemed, had gotten a little carried away in Mr. Beh Sabagha's dye shop."
The factual information about the almost dead language Aramaic is fascinating. The book is both about this language and the author's family.
Through page 272: I MUST add this too! Father and son are at Cambridge taking part at a high level academic conference on the Neo-Aramaic Language. The author MUST be beginning to see the the wonderful character of his father. His father is one of the few of academia who can talk so we all understand, who can make us laugh and feel passion for a subject, who brings all the scientific gibberish back to plain, straight, clear understandable words that ALL understand.
Through page 269: What is it like to go back to a place where you grew up? Not many of us live in the same place all our lives, so this is a question that speaks to us all. I have found that the man-made things, yes, they change. Nevertheless you recognize the "land". The hills the trees. Somehow the landscape remains and you can reconnect. This is easier in the country rather than in urban areas where everything is practically gone, but teeny bits remain even there. Also, is going back a disappointment? Another topic in this part of the book concerns the author's attempt to reconnect with his father. Quite simply their relationship was not at all good. They were up to that point very different people. When the author had a son himself he started understanding what it is like - "to be a father", to love a child irregardless of differences. Maybe it is pure biology, but you just do love your children. All of them, and they too are usually very different from each other! That is where I am now. I do not know where this will end up for these two people, the author and his father.
Through page 209: Studying at Yale the author very well captures how it must feel to fall into east coast American ivy league life, having first grown up in a a remote Kurdish village. Even life in bustling Jerusalem has no comparison to life at Yale. I have read lots of immigrant memoirs, but this is one of the best, something I clearly recognized.
Through page 176: The family emigrates to Israel. An analysis of the Jewish melting-pot is fascinating:
"Itzhak Ben-Zvi and David Ben-Gurion were sometimes called 'the twins'....Ben-Gurion as Prime Minister, Ben-Zvi as President. Yet, on the question of Israel's Middle Eastern immigrants, they never saw eye to eye. To Ben-Gurion Israel was a melting-pot. ....Ben Zvi was perhaps the only man in Israel with the stripes to challenge the melting-pot theory....For Ben-Zvi, the truth about Jews' common past could best be glimpsed, not through an erasure of differences, but through the light refracted by its many subcultures."
Or on page 69 and 70 about the great Muslim, Kurdish warrior general Saladin, a champion of jihad born in Tikrit 1138, who repelled the invasion of King Richard the Lionhearted and his Crusaders:
"Yet Saladin is remembered today less for his military cunning than his chivalry. When Richard's horse was killed, Saladin sent two replacements. When Richard fell ill after his victory at Jaffa, Saladin sent a sorbet of fruit and snow to cool his rival's fever. Christian crusaders had slaughtered thousands of Muslim prisoners, but after his victory, Saladin let Christians exit Jerusalem unmolested."
There is so much here of interest! Religious extremism was rare. Is that the key difference? History moves in cycles, but can't we lessen the waves' peaks and troughs?
Through page 69: I love this, so I am sharing a bit with you. Lots of fascinating history dating from 2700 years ago up to what happened to Iraq in WW1 and during WW2. Absolutely fascinating. If history isn't your thing it is still marvelous b/c family life in the isolated mountain village of Zakno constitutes the dominant thread. There are photos of the people and the place and a map - hurray for books with maps, although it is a bit rudimentary. I suck up hearing about how the Jews, Christians and Muslims ENJOYED each other's company:
"Seclusion (in the isolated mountain village) bred fraternity: Muslim, Jew and Christian suffered alike through the region's cruel cycles of flood, famine and Kurdish tribal bloodshed. They prospered alike when the soil yielded bumper crops of wheat, gall nuts and fragrant tobacco. In important ways they were Kurds first and Muslims, Christians and Jews second. Muslims sent Jews bread and milk as gifts after Passover. They ate matzoh, which they called "holiday bread" as a delicacy. They sent their Jewish neighbors hot tea during the Sabbath, when Jews were forbidden to light fires. Some Muslims even asked the synagogue to wake them early in the days before Yom Kippur . They viewed early rising on Jewish days of penitence as bringing good luck. And the Jews paid back the respect, forgoing cigarettes , for instance, during the holy month of Ramadan , when Muslims may not smoke."
Can't we learn from this? In Baghdad, at this time, riots and fighting between Muslims and Jews were violent and constant.
Through page 28: I am totally loving this. Although predominantly non-fiction, the uthor is a true story teller. His grandfather is described, when he is first presented to his future bride, who is only 13, as: "a short man in a shalla u-shappiksa of such brightly colored stripes that Miryam had to resist twin impulses - the first to giggle, the second to flee. The traditional billowy trousers and short sheep's-wool jacket radiated every color of the rainbow. Someone, it seemed, had gotten a little carried away in Mr. Beh Sabagha's dye shop."
The factual information about the almost dead language Aramaic is fascinating. The book is both about this language and the author's family.
January 19, 2019
One of the reasons I love Goodreads, and my main group specifically, is that I pick up things I wouldn’t have picked up. This is one of those gems, I never would have touched. For one, I am not drawn to non-fiction, or autobiographical memoir type things. Wrap me up in a good story! I just wouldn’t have gone for it, and that would have been a loss. This was perfect for me for the January 2019 Iraq challenge, and I actually greatly enjoyed it.
The book is beautifully written in places, and has gems in either writing or threads, concepts, ideas, or in just the feeling that is invoked. I am grateful I had the opportunity to talk about the book with Rachel at 80/85% because it allowed me to crystallize my thoughts about it. There were a lot of different dimensions and themes evoked. A lot of levels going on at once, and yet it did not feel overwhelming. It felt subtle to me. It touches on a lot of heavy and interesting and powerful topics, but it does so extremely subtly and with a lot of beauty intertwined. This book covered the theme of father and son, distant father and son, autobiography and memoir, history, and the history of antisemitism in the word for the Jews, the evoking of a lost time, with its storytelling. Issues of immigration, acculturation, racism and social class amongst Jews in Israel, identity, academia and writing, lost tribes, beautiful harmony and brotherhood amongst cultures, and finally – Aramaic – the loss of a dying language, (almost completely gone) and what that means, and the legacies one leaves. That’s a lot for a 325 page book. It was moving.
Yona Sobar writes plenty of articles on the lost language of Aramaic and its links to Hebrew and how they emerged within a culture and experience. It’s a “memorial candle” for his prior life. Our author, Ariel Sobar, in writing this book, it’s a memorial candle for his father, grandparents, great-grandparents, and for a whole culture. It’s meant to preserve something. For his children, for himself, and for the world. I think our writing down of our stories for our children, is one of the most incredibly precious legacies we can leave. I can understand why the author interrupted his life to make this project happen – this is his life. And understanding his own connection to it, and that of his kids, either from Los Angeles, Maine, or Washington DC, well nothing could possibly make more sense to me.
The story itself traces his father and grandfather, and great grandfather, from a town and community called Zakho, which was the bustling predominate area where Jewish Kurds, Iraqi Jews lived. It was a community not unlike others through the middle east and Europe, where Jews and Muslims, and other countries lived together in a beautiful harmony. Sharing bread, cultures, and deep respect. By the way, for those of you who wouldn’t know it, there are many places all over Israel that look the same, Jews and Arabs, Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs, live beautifully together. The news would make it sound like that is not the case, but it is, and it has been for centuries. The fighting and Arab terrorism happens on the borders and in distinct pockets where hatred is taught. Similar to Iraq at the time, there became an Anti Jewish sentiment from the government, and as Israel was established and grew, many countries took that as an opportunity to threaten their Jewish populations to leave – leave or be killed. This happened all over the world, even before the establishment of Israel. But like German or Polish Jews, or Sephardic ones, these Kurds, felt they were Arab first. When they did leave their homelands, with the tastes and cultures, and music and language of communities, they had to be literally “Denaturalized”. No longer a part of their country and told never to return. When Yona eventually does so, he is terrified for himself, as well as for his author son. It is truly a country, a language, a time in history lost. But his trips back there, are indelibly moving. Zakho comes alive in the book, as does the Aramaic language. It is truly the recapturing of something lost. And the recapturing that happens between Yona and Ariel, father and son, across time, was also truly beautiful and a part of what becomes reclaimed and preserved. It was beautifully done, and again I would not have picked it up, if not for the Iraq challenge.
A personal story. Experiencing this mistreatment and social class issues the Iraqi Kurds had when they came to Israel, was quite interesting, and is a cultural stain of which I am not proud of. Israel has enough to fight with the misinformation and inaccurate treatment that emerges from the painted news media and hatred in general, its hard when the truth of our actions is placed in front of us, and we need to own it. Iraqi Jews were considered a lower class, incapable of intellectual growth and leadership, our redneck hillbillies or poor immigrants. Of course, Yona and many of his friends flew in the face of that and advanced anyway, but they had to at significant predjudice. In fact if not to reclaim Aramaic, Yona may not have received the opportunities and resultant life that he did. And he would never have come close to his dream of being a doctor, or a linguist. Not everybody was as lucky, and the world is lucky to have his experience, and having given Zakho and that time back to us. And of course Ariel continues that tradition, but as he describes with more heart and storytelling than the linguists could capture. He really does explain how language is born out of experience. But my own experience with Iraqi Jews is just two lone experiences, but they made an impression on me. It certainly does feel like a lost and assimilated tribe. With so few people left to carry the memories.
My own family, and like Ariel, it is already growing so distant from that of my viewpoint. For me it barely exists, and for my children, it doesn’t exist at all. I have written down the stories of everything I have known or heard, but my kids at this point, know nothing. My father’s aunt and uncle both hid in the hills of Russia, came back to Poland after the war, where everything was lost, and many more people were killed after the war, attempting to return to their homes, and to reclaim their status in their home countries. My Aunt Gittel and Uncle Herse met after the war, and got married. With their first child, my cousin Rifka, they moved to Israel in 1947/1948 where nothing was there. The way the story goes, five or ten families who slept in tents, who later founded the town of Afula, sat around and tried to figure out how to begin again. They said, who could drive a truck? My Uncle Herse (Herschel) raised his hand. That is how he became the Fire Chief of Afula. The town of Afula grew into a huge metropolis, and that firestation stayed in the family for decades. My aunt and uncle went on to have two more children and their youngest Bluma, went onto marry her husband. Who, for the damned life of me, my memory is fading, I am forgetting his name, and I have known it my entire life. I can name all of his four children and their spouses. I remember always knowing he was an Iraqi Jew, one of the people who came from a lost culture, where Jews were unwelcome. He too was part of the building of early Israel and had that Kurdish culture within him. Naturally, he became the next fire Chief of Afula, and he is since now retired too. He has a handful of grandchildren and a very nice and blessed life. But my favorite memory of him? It was at my wedding, where 8 of the Israeli’s, a whole contingent, came over to America. And during the Hora, he grabbed the mike at its inception, and sang for 20 minutes, as the entire party danced. It was the longest, most spirited, most moving hora I have ever had the pleasure to be a part of, and it was unforgettable. I have never felt such an alive part of moving tradition. And it was funny, I’m sure the American band had never seen such a thing happen, but they just went with it, and went on playing. It was kind of incredible, a bit of past reclaimed. Always, my memory of that guy, will be him just grabbing the mike and singing his full heart away.
The other memory I have, and it stayed with me because it was powerful, but its fuzzy and hazy, was having in my 20’s, when I was meeting people and dating and what not, and just milling around with groups of people, meeting a young woman who was an Iraqi Jew. I recalled talking to her, and she told me how hard it was for family and community, and the mistreatment in and out of Iraq, as well as the desire to retain a piece of culture from a beloved homeland and legacy. That one conversation impressed on me so much. And its telling that the number of Iraqi Jews that I have met, totals two. Him and her, and its telling that I cannot even remember either name. Not even his. It will come to me at some point. Yesher? Maybe its Yesher.
But this is why a memoir, like Ariel Sobar’s is so important. Capture what was lost, so like a language, somehow a piece of it remains. Because it is within us, even as we assimilate down. It is the legacy we leave, through words, and writing, memories, song, food, language, and most especially heart.
The book is beautifully written in places, and has gems in either writing or threads, concepts, ideas, or in just the feeling that is invoked. I am grateful I had the opportunity to talk about the book with Rachel at 80/85% because it allowed me to crystallize my thoughts about it. There were a lot of different dimensions and themes evoked. A lot of levels going on at once, and yet it did not feel overwhelming. It felt subtle to me. It touches on a lot of heavy and interesting and powerful topics, but it does so extremely subtly and with a lot of beauty intertwined. This book covered the theme of father and son, distant father and son, autobiography and memoir, history, and the history of antisemitism in the word for the Jews, the evoking of a lost time, with its storytelling. Issues of immigration, acculturation, racism and social class amongst Jews in Israel, identity, academia and writing, lost tribes, beautiful harmony and brotherhood amongst cultures, and finally – Aramaic – the loss of a dying language, (almost completely gone) and what that means, and the legacies one leaves. That’s a lot for a 325 page book. It was moving.
Yona Sobar writes plenty of articles on the lost language of Aramaic and its links to Hebrew and how they emerged within a culture and experience. It’s a “memorial candle” for his prior life. Our author, Ariel Sobar, in writing this book, it’s a memorial candle for his father, grandparents, great-grandparents, and for a whole culture. It’s meant to preserve something. For his children, for himself, and for the world. I think our writing down of our stories for our children, is one of the most incredibly precious legacies we can leave. I can understand why the author interrupted his life to make this project happen – this is his life. And understanding his own connection to it, and that of his kids, either from Los Angeles, Maine, or Washington DC, well nothing could possibly make more sense to me.
The story itself traces his father and grandfather, and great grandfather, from a town and community called Zakho, which was the bustling predominate area where Jewish Kurds, Iraqi Jews lived. It was a community not unlike others through the middle east and Europe, where Jews and Muslims, and other countries lived together in a beautiful harmony. Sharing bread, cultures, and deep respect. By the way, for those of you who wouldn’t know it, there are many places all over Israel that look the same, Jews and Arabs, Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs, live beautifully together. The news would make it sound like that is not the case, but it is, and it has been for centuries. The fighting and Arab terrorism happens on the borders and in distinct pockets where hatred is taught. Similar to Iraq at the time, there became an Anti Jewish sentiment from the government, and as Israel was established and grew, many countries took that as an opportunity to threaten their Jewish populations to leave – leave or be killed. This happened all over the world, even before the establishment of Israel. But like German or Polish Jews, or Sephardic ones, these Kurds, felt they were Arab first. When they did leave their homelands, with the tastes and cultures, and music and language of communities, they had to be literally “Denaturalized”. No longer a part of their country and told never to return. When Yona eventually does so, he is terrified for himself, as well as for his author son. It is truly a country, a language, a time in history lost. But his trips back there, are indelibly moving. Zakho comes alive in the book, as does the Aramaic language. It is truly the recapturing of something lost. And the recapturing that happens between Yona and Ariel, father and son, across time, was also truly beautiful and a part of what becomes reclaimed and preserved. It was beautifully done, and again I would not have picked it up, if not for the Iraq challenge.
A personal story. Experiencing this mistreatment and social class issues the Iraqi Kurds had when they came to Israel, was quite interesting, and is a cultural stain of which I am not proud of. Israel has enough to fight with the misinformation and inaccurate treatment that emerges from the painted news media and hatred in general, its hard when the truth of our actions is placed in front of us, and we need to own it. Iraqi Jews were considered a lower class, incapable of intellectual growth and leadership, our redneck hillbillies or poor immigrants. Of course, Yona and many of his friends flew in the face of that and advanced anyway, but they had to at significant predjudice. In fact if not to reclaim Aramaic, Yona may not have received the opportunities and resultant life that he did. And he would never have come close to his dream of being a doctor, or a linguist. Not everybody was as lucky, and the world is lucky to have his experience, and having given Zakho and that time back to us. And of course Ariel continues that tradition, but as he describes with more heart and storytelling than the linguists could capture. He really does explain how language is born out of experience. But my own experience with Iraqi Jews is just two lone experiences, but they made an impression on me. It certainly does feel like a lost and assimilated tribe. With so few people left to carry the memories.
My own family, and like Ariel, it is already growing so distant from that of my viewpoint. For me it barely exists, and for my children, it doesn’t exist at all. I have written down the stories of everything I have known or heard, but my kids at this point, know nothing. My father’s aunt and uncle both hid in the hills of Russia, came back to Poland after the war, where everything was lost, and many more people were killed after the war, attempting to return to their homes, and to reclaim their status in their home countries. My Aunt Gittel and Uncle Herse met after the war, and got married. With their first child, my cousin Rifka, they moved to Israel in 1947/1948 where nothing was there. The way the story goes, five or ten families who slept in tents, who later founded the town of Afula, sat around and tried to figure out how to begin again. They said, who could drive a truck? My Uncle Herse (Herschel) raised his hand. That is how he became the Fire Chief of Afula. The town of Afula grew into a huge metropolis, and that firestation stayed in the family for decades. My aunt and uncle went on to have two more children and their youngest Bluma, went onto marry her husband. Who, for the damned life of me, my memory is fading, I am forgetting his name, and I have known it my entire life. I can name all of his four children and their spouses. I remember always knowing he was an Iraqi Jew, one of the people who came from a lost culture, where Jews were unwelcome. He too was part of the building of early Israel and had that Kurdish culture within him. Naturally, he became the next fire Chief of Afula, and he is since now retired too. He has a handful of grandchildren and a very nice and blessed life. But my favorite memory of him? It was at my wedding, where 8 of the Israeli’s, a whole contingent, came over to America. And during the Hora, he grabbed the mike at its inception, and sang for 20 minutes, as the entire party danced. It was the longest, most spirited, most moving hora I have ever had the pleasure to be a part of, and it was unforgettable. I have never felt such an alive part of moving tradition. And it was funny, I’m sure the American band had never seen such a thing happen, but they just went with it, and went on playing. It was kind of incredible, a bit of past reclaimed. Always, my memory of that guy, will be him just grabbing the mike and singing his full heart away.
The other memory I have, and it stayed with me because it was powerful, but its fuzzy and hazy, was having in my 20’s, when I was meeting people and dating and what not, and just milling around with groups of people, meeting a young woman who was an Iraqi Jew. I recalled talking to her, and she told me how hard it was for family and community, and the mistreatment in and out of Iraq, as well as the desire to retain a piece of culture from a beloved homeland and legacy. That one conversation impressed on me so much. And its telling that the number of Iraqi Jews that I have met, totals two. Him and her, and its telling that I cannot even remember either name. Not even his. It will come to me at some point. Yesher? Maybe its Yesher.
But this is why a memoir, like Ariel Sobar’s is so important. Capture what was lost, so like a language, somehow a piece of it remains. Because it is within us, even as we assimilate down. It is the legacy we leave, through words, and writing, memories, song, food, language, and most especially heart.
June 29, 2009
Wow. I really had my expectations exceeded with this one, yet it is hard to describe. Story of Kurdish Jews? (I didn't even know there WERE Kurdish Jews.) Story of the demise of Aramaic? I didn't know anyone still spoke it. Story of a man who immigrated from Kurdish Iraq to Jerusalem to New Haven to LA? Story of a son coming to terms with a father he had never understood? Story of keeping roots in a different land? Maybe all of these things. This haunting part-journalism, part novel, part memoir has elements of all of these. It is a beautiful book, but with a part of it always just out of reach, like the missing aunt the author desperately wanted to find but couldn't. I loved the way the author re-imagined, re-created the past he could not completely pin down through interviews--something I've often toyed with doing myself, although with less exotic material. I cried as he imagined his grandmother, forced to hand over the daughter she could not nurse to a wet-nurse, and then never seeing her again. Beautiful.
May 31, 2024
I was totally impressed by this book on many levels. The author, Ariel Sabar had chosen to explore and then write of his ancient heritage, which he had done with great humanity and detail. Not to be ignored is the fact of his Iraqi roots- Kurdish and Jewish to boot! If all of this is not impressive enough, the reader quickly discovers that the lanuage spoken there, until 1950's was Aramaic, dating back to Christ and further!
************************
The author's family lived in a remote village in Iraq,, Zahko, not far from Mosul, near the Turkish border. There they observed their Jewish roots, but also lived in friendship and respect beside their Muslim neighbors. This was a dusty, ancient town with many combined celebrations, their own garb, including billowing trousers and turbans. The family worked hard and they were successful. They were considered to be descended from one of the last tribes of the Babylonian exile and were thus believed to be one of the last people to speak Aramaic. Life had continued in peace, even during early WWII, when some of the anti-Semitic feelings spilled over. Then, when the State of Israel was created and Arab hostility erupted, everything changed. Violent anti-Semitism and Zionism caused suspicion, round-ups, imprisonment, even executions of the Jewish people there. Faced with this persecution, these innocent people fled their ancient land for Israel. It is estimated that the mass exodus of 120,000 Jews from Iraq were airlifted there in the 1950's, one of the world's largest and almost unknown diasporas. In addition, Sabar noted that “between 1948 and the end of 1951, some 684,201 Jews from across the globe sailed, rode- and even walked- to Israel, more than doubling the Jewish population”.
Much more is told in this spell-binding story. Clearly, Sabar had done much research, which in addition to this book, provided him with new-found knowledge and respect for his parents and his ancestors. At times the language almost reads like a novel, with conversations mentioned, but this seems to fit well with this wonderful, amazing investigation of his family's past, which is best left for readers to discover.
************************
The author's family lived in a remote village in Iraq,, Zahko, not far from Mosul, near the Turkish border. There they observed their Jewish roots, but also lived in friendship and respect beside their Muslim neighbors. This was a dusty, ancient town with many combined celebrations, their own garb, including billowing trousers and turbans. The family worked hard and they were successful. They were considered to be descended from one of the last tribes of the Babylonian exile and were thus believed to be one of the last people to speak Aramaic. Life had continued in peace, even during early WWII, when some of the anti-Semitic feelings spilled over. Then, when the State of Israel was created and Arab hostility erupted, everything changed. Violent anti-Semitism and Zionism caused suspicion, round-ups, imprisonment, even executions of the Jewish people there. Faced with this persecution, these innocent people fled their ancient land for Israel. It is estimated that the mass exodus of 120,000 Jews from Iraq were airlifted there in the 1950's, one of the world's largest and almost unknown diasporas. In addition, Sabar noted that “between 1948 and the end of 1951, some 684,201 Jews from across the globe sailed, rode- and even walked- to Israel, more than doubling the Jewish population”.
Much more is told in this spell-binding story. Clearly, Sabar had done much research, which in addition to this book, provided him with new-found knowledge and respect for his parents and his ancestors. At times the language almost reads like a novel, with conversations mentioned, but this seems to fit well with this wonderful, amazing investigation of his family's past, which is best left for readers to discover.
February 1, 2009
If you are an American Jew, the offspring of immigrants, a linguist, a student of the Mideast crisis, or an ex-teen who's finally dropped the attitude, you should read this book. And if I'm not mistaken, that would be all of us.
I've scarcely considered the plight of the Sephardic Jews of Western Asia much less the disposition of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Nor pondered the enormity of forced exile and the task of assimilating these uprooted peoples in America or Israel. Never knew the painstaking scholarship involved in archiving an ancient language. I was taken aback by the prejudices held by European immigrants towards those from the Middle East and Africa during the settlement of Israel. And heartened to learn that in Kurdish Iraq midway through the 20th century per a village elder there, "We and the Jews were loving each other...We were blood brothers."
I am no stranger, however, to the know-it-all attitudes with which children view their parents, and the father and child reunion that dominates the last chapters of this book is the best part of all.
Take a journey with Mr. Sabar back to a lost homeland, back to family. It's a place we all need to visit.
I've scarcely considered the plight of the Sephardic Jews of Western Asia much less the disposition of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Nor pondered the enormity of forced exile and the task of assimilating these uprooted peoples in America or Israel. Never knew the painstaking scholarship involved in archiving an ancient language. I was taken aback by the prejudices held by European immigrants towards those from the Middle East and Africa during the settlement of Israel. And heartened to learn that in Kurdish Iraq midway through the 20th century per a village elder there, "We and the Jews were loving each other...We were blood brothers."
I am no stranger, however, to the know-it-all attitudes with which children view their parents, and the father and child reunion that dominates the last chapters of this book is the best part of all.
Take a journey with Mr. Sabar back to a lost homeland, back to family. It's a place we all need to visit.
November 1, 2025
Chasms and Continuums.
An inclusive mountainous tribe and a people misunderstood by others and amongst themselves.
Unloved by the host countries of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran—they find it difficult to associate among their own, geographically.
This is an offering of a specific culture within a culture.
Both the Kurds and its’ Jews are ancient surviving peoples and often without clear borders.
Isolation and contempt by larger and ephemeral nations breeds a unique Weltanschauung.
The book also addresses the understory of language (Aramaic notably) and how it morphs and gasps for existence and how its’ evanescence has societal implications.
An inclusive mountainous tribe and a people misunderstood by others and amongst themselves.
Unloved by the host countries of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran—they find it difficult to associate among their own, geographically.
This is an offering of a specific culture within a culture.
Both the Kurds and its’ Jews are ancient surviving peoples and often without clear borders.
Isolation and contempt by larger and ephemeral nations breeds a unique Weltanschauung.
The book also addresses the understory of language (Aramaic notably) and how it morphs and gasps for existence and how its’ evanescence has societal implications.
September 14, 2010
This starts out slow. Deep subject. Moves faster as you get into the story and why the author has chosen to write about his father. I found that it gave yet another insight into the Middle East and their way of thinking. It is a beautiful tribute to a well-loved father.
August 25, 2008
My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq, written by Ariel Sabar and published by Algonquin Press is actually the story of three journeys.
Yona’s (Ariel’s father) journey is told first. His starts his journey as a young Jewish boy in a small village in Kurdish Iraq. From there, his journey continues to Israel and it finally ends in the United States. Yona is a humble man, who believes in the value of mankind. He treasures his family and is passionate about preserving Aramaic, his mother tongue
Ariel’s journey takes him from a privileged, belligerent young man who is embarrassed because his father is different, and makes no attempt to fit in, to a husband and father who begins to see the importance of his family’s past.
Ariel and Yona take the final journey together, traveling to Israel and Iraq. While they’re on their journey, Ariel comes to realize that his father’s work is important. He comes to appreciate the value of preserving the past as we move into the future.
I enjoyed this moving tribute to a humble man and his people. It was wonderful to see the transformation in the relationship between Ariel and Yona. I have to admit that I found some of the political and historical facts a little difficult to follow. I did learn a lot about the history of Iraq, though.
Yona’s (Ariel’s father) journey is told first. His starts his journey as a young Jewish boy in a small village in Kurdish Iraq. From there, his journey continues to Israel and it finally ends in the United States. Yona is a humble man, who believes in the value of mankind. He treasures his family and is passionate about preserving Aramaic, his mother tongue
Ariel’s journey takes him from a privileged, belligerent young man who is embarrassed because his father is different, and makes no attempt to fit in, to a husband and father who begins to see the importance of his family’s past.
Ariel and Yona take the final journey together, traveling to Israel and Iraq. While they’re on their journey, Ariel comes to realize that his father’s work is important. He comes to appreciate the value of preserving the past as we move into the future.
I enjoyed this moving tribute to a humble man and his people. It was wonderful to see the transformation in the relationship between Ariel and Yona. I have to admit that I found some of the political and historical facts a little difficult to follow. I did learn a lot about the history of Iraq, though.
October 23, 2008
Though Ariel Sabar may regret that his relationship with his father was so contentious, readers have cause to rejoice because that fractured relationship led Sabar to pen this elegant tale of his father's life and language.
Yona Sabar, a Jewish Kurd, grew up speaking Aramaic, an ancient language now all but lost. He is also a celebrated linguist who has worked tirelessly to document his language before it dies. This book traces that effort, weaving a colorful tapestry of Jewish life in Iraq, Kurdish life in Israel, and immigrant life in America.
Though the portions of the book dealing with Ariel himself were less compelling, the tales of Yona's early life in Kurdistan are hypnotic- I had a difficult time putting this book down. The writing is excellent and the character of Yona breathes throughout the book. The book is never technical about linguistics; the story of Yona's work is presented as I believe he experienced it- a treasure hunt generating excitement with each new clue.
Highly recommended!
Yona Sabar, a Jewish Kurd, grew up speaking Aramaic, an ancient language now all but lost. He is also a celebrated linguist who has worked tirelessly to document his language before it dies. This book traces that effort, weaving a colorful tapestry of Jewish life in Iraq, Kurdish life in Israel, and immigrant life in America.
Though the portions of the book dealing with Ariel himself were less compelling, the tales of Yona's early life in Kurdistan are hypnotic- I had a difficult time putting this book down. The writing is excellent and the character of Yona breathes throughout the book. The book is never technical about linguistics; the story of Yona's work is presented as I believe he experienced it- a treasure hunt generating excitement with each new clue.
Highly recommended!
February 18, 2010
"My Father's Paradise" describes the life and family background of Yona Sabar, the author's father. Yona was born in Zakho, Kurdistan; moved to Israel with his family at the age of twelve; and left for America in his twenties where he became an important scholar of the Neo-Aramaic language. Ariel Sabar's carefully researched book, while focusing essentially on Yona's story, also includes some interesting information about the history of the Kurdish Jews in Zakho and their ignominious reception in Israel in the 1950s, plus a bit of background about the advent of Neo-Aramaic as a recognized language for study.
This book was something of a slow starter for me, especially since I wasn't crazy about Ariel's efforts to reconstruct his family's early history in narrative form by fleshing out anecdotes with imagined and sometimes stilted dialogue. Gradually, though, I became fascinated with the story of Yona's rise as the young son of impoverished and uneducated Kurdish parents who never quite learned the ropes in Israel, becoming a Yale graduate and renowned academic. Ariel's journalistic skills are evident in this book -- it is clearly the product of numerous interviews and extensive investigation but the tone remains readable and engaging, never heavy. Ariel also displays admirable honesty as he describes the rebellious attitude he displayed toward his immigrant father as an aggressively American California teen, and how this attitude was eventually transformed to one of closeness and respect.
This is a book I probably would not have picked up had it not been for my book club, but I'm glad I did. Like
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World, it exposed me to an unfamiliar Jewish community and was a touching story of immigration, trying to reinvent oneself in a new culture, and the complicated relationships within a family. Ariel doesn't shy away from complexity; he shares some choices that his father and his family had to make that might be difficult for 21st century readers to understand, and does so in a sympathetic and respectful way. If the topic interests you at all, I definitely recommend this book.
This book was something of a slow starter for me, especially since I wasn't crazy about Ariel's efforts to reconstruct his family's early history in narrative form by fleshing out anecdotes with imagined and sometimes stilted dialogue. Gradually, though, I became fascinated with the story of Yona's rise as the young son of impoverished and uneducated Kurdish parents who never quite learned the ropes in Israel, becoming a Yale graduate and renowned academic. Ariel's journalistic skills are evident in this book -- it is clearly the product of numerous interviews and extensive investigation but the tone remains readable and engaging, never heavy. Ariel also displays admirable honesty as he describes the rebellious attitude he displayed toward his immigrant father as an aggressively American California teen, and how this attitude was eventually transformed to one of closeness and respect.
This is a book I probably would not have picked up had it not been for my book club, but I'm glad I did. Like
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: My Family's Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World, it exposed me to an unfamiliar Jewish community and was a touching story of immigration, trying to reinvent oneself in a new culture, and the complicated relationships within a family. Ariel doesn't shy away from complexity; he shares some choices that his father and his family had to make that might be difficult for 21st century readers to understand, and does so in a sympathetic and respectful way. If the topic interests you at all, I definitely recommend this book.
July 4, 2018
A truly captivating story. Ariel Sabar's exquisite telling of his family's history as they leave Kurdistan for Israel and points beyond. It's not very often one finds a storyteller who can captivate an audience with a true story. Ariel is a modern day bard and the story he tells is one that everyone should listen to. Every poignant point of life is captured within these pages. The truly ancient way of Jewish life in a Kurdistan town brought to life how venerable and prolific Jewish religious tradition is. The tale of Kurdistan life illustrated the Middle Eastern sectarian violence experienced today is a recent development within a long history of this region. It is not the norm.
His family's forced adaptation to Western ways in the struggling infant country of Israel during the early '50's was eye opening. A migration of over 600,000 diasporadic Jews to the Land of Israel in less than a decade from the country's birth is almost too much to imagine. The struggles of the family to adapt from an older clannish based culture to a modern post-industrial city was heart breaking to experience through the written word. The disenfranchisement of Ariel's grandparents while trying their very best to succeed for their family was a story that needs to be told in today's world as we experience mass migrations through many regions.
And finally the settling of Ariel's father in the Golden State as a UCLA professor of Neo-Aramaic is both uplifting while filled with sorrow for the loss of what was Jewish Kurdish culture. Like his father, Ariel's book is an attempt to capture his family's history and experience for the generations to come. There are lessons between these pages for all of humanity that are told in a manner that all cultures will relate.
His family's forced adaptation to Western ways in the struggling infant country of Israel during the early '50's was eye opening. A migration of over 600,000 diasporadic Jews to the Land of Israel in less than a decade from the country's birth is almost too much to imagine. The struggles of the family to adapt from an older clannish based culture to a modern post-industrial city was heart breaking to experience through the written word. The disenfranchisement of Ariel's grandparents while trying their very best to succeed for their family was a story that needs to be told in today's world as we experience mass migrations through many regions.
And finally the settling of Ariel's father in the Golden State as a UCLA professor of Neo-Aramaic is both uplifting while filled with sorrow for the loss of what was Jewish Kurdish culture. Like his father, Ariel's book is an attempt to capture his family's history and experience for the generations to come. There are lessons between these pages for all of humanity that are told in a manner that all cultures will relate.
November 18, 2009
Fantastic book. Sabar is a GOOD writer.
I was surprised at how enjoyable this book was and easy to read (once I got into it...the first 15 pages or so). I had selected it as one of my 'grow my brain' books to read inbetween my fun reads.
What a pleasant surprise. Before reading this, I can't say I knew what a Kurdish Jew was, really, and how one differred from European Jews I'd read about. I didn't have an understanding of Israel/Palestine/Iraq and their relationship with one another, other than knowing it was full of turmoil.
Sabar did a great job of interjecting snippets of history (those paragraphs I sometimes had to read a few times to make sure they sunk in) in a great great story of his father's upbringing and immigration to America. I was fascinated, having never been in touch with anyone's story who grew up in an isolated part of the world where Aramaic ("the language of Christ") was the main language (and just spoken at that. Zahko, where Sabar's father grew up, was so isolated that many villagers didn't even read. They were born, lived and died in Zahko, having never ventured into the 'outside' world.) Fascinating.
I find myself more connected to my past after reading this book. I realize that I am much more a creation of those who went before me than I before acknowledged.
My love for people just grew that much deeper. Thanks for broadening my Horizons, Sabar!
I was surprised at how enjoyable this book was and easy to read (once I got into it...the first 15 pages or so). I had selected it as one of my 'grow my brain' books to read inbetween my fun reads.
What a pleasant surprise. Before reading this, I can't say I knew what a Kurdish Jew was, really, and how one differred from European Jews I'd read about. I didn't have an understanding of Israel/Palestine/Iraq and their relationship with one another, other than knowing it was full of turmoil.
Sabar did a great job of interjecting snippets of history (those paragraphs I sometimes had to read a few times to make sure they sunk in) in a great great story of his father's upbringing and immigration to America. I was fascinated, having never been in touch with anyone's story who grew up in an isolated part of the world where Aramaic ("the language of Christ") was the main language (and just spoken at that. Zahko, where Sabar's father grew up, was so isolated that many villagers didn't even read. They were born, lived and died in Zahko, having never ventured into the 'outside' world.) Fascinating.
I find myself more connected to my past after reading this book. I realize that I am much more a creation of those who went before me than I before acknowledged.
My love for people just grew that much deeper. Thanks for broadening my Horizons, Sabar!
May 3, 2016
An excellent book describing one family's experience being driven from their life in Kurdistan and eventually settling in the USA. The reader gains and understanding of the difficulties involved in assimilation to a foreign land. The story is well written, full of detail and a pleasure to read.
August 10, 2012
In 1985 I was 25 years old and living at 25 Rehov Antigones in the Katamon Vav neighborhood of Jerusalem, surrounded by Israelis from Kurdistan and their grown children and grandchildren. The neighborhood of the Katomonim was working class and Jewish Kurdish. Not Moroccan, or Yemenite, or Iraqi, but distinctly and undeniably Kurdish. I didn't know at the time that the Kurds were considered to be at the bottom of the Israeli social hierarchy. I didn't then know that the language the older folks were speaking was actually neo-Aramaic, the surviving remnant of the language of the ancient land of Israel, found in Books of Ezra and Daniel and in the Talmud. I thought of them only as ordinary working class Mizrahim, "Sephardic" Jews from Arab lands.
We young Americans in Katamon Vav, for our part, were real oddities. We were from the golden medina (how do you say "golden land" in Kurdish Aramaic?), but poor, living on student stipends and minimum wage jobs. They must have wondered what the hell we were doing in their world. In some global sense I was on the top of the heap - I had a college degree and an American passport! But in another sense, with my broken Hebrew and lack of money, living on white cheese, lehem chai, lemon juice syrup and cucumbers with three other bachelors, I was below these Israeli Kurdish natives in social status. I may have had a fine American life waiting for me if I left, but I was a miserably incompetent Israeli in their world. We did not interact much with our Kurdish neighbors. They didn't invite us into their lives. I was curious about them, but busy with my studies at Hebrew University. It was just a rental situation in a poor neighborhood.
Ariel Sabar's "My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for his Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq" puts everything I experienced in Kurdish Jerusalem in context. Through his eyes I understand better what Iraqi Kurdistan once was, what my neighbors must have experienced in making the vast cultural jump to Israel, and who they were in a deep sense. Reading Sabar a new affection for them replaces what was largely an experience of curiosity mixed with non-communication and misunderstandings, mostly of the ordinary landlord-tenant kind, but exacerbated by cross-cultural miscues.
Sabar's narrative is a two level story, personal and historical. At the personal level, it is the story of his own struggles in America with his immigrant father, a double immigrant, from both Kurdistan and the Jerusalem Katamonim where I had lived. By the time of Sabar's birth in 1971, Sabar's father had left the Katamonim and Israel to become a world renowned academic scholar of neo-Aramaic. He was ensconced at UCLA and Sabar would be raised in Los Angeles of the 1970s and 1980s. Their relationship was difficult and the book is the story of Sabar's effort as an American to understand his father, so culturally alien in manner and perspective. It is an old immigrant story, a father from the old country and a son in the new who do not understand each other, and it is beautifully told in a modern manifestation here.
But beyond the personal the book is also an historical narrative of the entire Kurdish immigration and settlement, describing the deep history of the Jewish settlement in Kurdistan, beginning with the original Babylonia exile in 500 BCE, and then moving forward across hundreds of years of little recorded history in a mountainous back country, using fragments of historical texts and family history to tell the story of the entire Kurdish Jewish situation, culminating in the mass exodus of the Kurdish Jewish community to Israel in 1951.
Anyone who has lived in Israel or has relatives (like I do) who were immigrants from the lands of e'dote ha'mizrach (the eastern communities) is familiar with the 1950s ma'aborot (transit camps) and the stories of the struggle, bigotry and discrimination that Middle Eastern Jews experienced at the hands of the Ashkenazi Israeli establishment of the era. Sabar's narrative brings that experience to life. As his family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins) and friends make clear, the dislocation and the poverty were profound, and the 1950s era bigotry was cutting. When Sabar's father received a scholarship at Yale in 1965 it is no surprise that he leaped for the life it promised as an American academic. His siblings however remained in Israel and their stories, explored here in some detail, are more typical of Kurdish immigrants to Israel like my former neighbors in the Katamonim.
But beyond my year in Katamon Vav, the personal parallels between my own life and Sabar's make this book feel intimately familiar to me. He and I share Los Angeles. Ariel Sabar grew up in Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s. I was some ten years older and grew up there in the 1970s. His father was a professor, the son of immigrant parents, who found freedom and professional renown in faraway Los Angeles. My father was also a professor, the son of immigrants (Russian Jews living in the Bronx, New York 1930s) who found freedom and professional renown in faraway Los Angeles. Ariel Sabar struggled more overtly with his father than I did with mine, but in the end we both developed a sense that the thing we were missing in the cultural break created by our parents' movement to the sun-baked sterility of Southern California had something to do with the obscure past our parents left behind. Sabar's need to discover a past seems to have its roots in the dystopian eternal now of West Los Angeles. There is a special ahistorical madness that develops in that California sun. It got to me, and it got to him. In a world without a past, sometimes you have to write one yourself.
Twenty seven years have passed since I lived in Katamon in 1985, a full generation. That's as much time as had already passed since the Kurds had first come to Israel and moved into the Katamon neighborhood when I was there in the mid-1980s. When I returned in 2009 the neighborhood looked perhaps slightly improved in the intervening quarter century. I thought I recognized the house I lived in. (See GoogleMaps link below.) I didn't knock. I couldn't remember the landlord's name. You can't go back. At least, you can't go back in any simple sense. Sabar does a lot of going back in his book, and discovers what remains and what has been washed away forever.
Ariel Sabar's story of searching for his father's past, and thus his own present, is marvelous as journalism, memoir, family history, Jewish and Middle Eastern history, and a beautiful exploration of an uneasy relationship between a father and a son. He does not wrap it up for us in a bow, or pretend that all the differences and breaks are reconciled. He saves the biggest disappointment for the end, and discovers the people who can never be reunited and the breaks that can never be repaired. But he does show us how it is possible to come to terms with the personal and cultural breaks that emerge as people grow into new cultural situations and migrate apart. It's a broken world he seems to say, but it can still all hang together in a new way if we weave the right web of words.
The web of words will bind us together and a livable coherence will emerge, and yet there will be story lines whose conclusions will be forever lost and questions that can never be resolved.
---
Postscript: I lived in one of these low buildings at 25 Antigonus (see GoogleMaps link below, in Katamon Vav (Katamon Six), Jerusalem, Israel, a Kurdish neighborhood. Many of the surrounding buildings have been added on to considerably, growing upward and toward the street, but it appears that my exact address has changed little. Image from circa 2012.
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=25+Reh...
We young Americans in Katamon Vav, for our part, were real oddities. We were from the golden medina (how do you say "golden land" in Kurdish Aramaic?), but poor, living on student stipends and minimum wage jobs. They must have wondered what the hell we were doing in their world. In some global sense I was on the top of the heap - I had a college degree and an American passport! But in another sense, with my broken Hebrew and lack of money, living on white cheese, lehem chai, lemon juice syrup and cucumbers with three other bachelors, I was below these Israeli Kurdish natives in social status. I may have had a fine American life waiting for me if I left, but I was a miserably incompetent Israeli in their world. We did not interact much with our Kurdish neighbors. They didn't invite us into their lives. I was curious about them, but busy with my studies at Hebrew University. It was just a rental situation in a poor neighborhood.
Ariel Sabar's "My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for his Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq" puts everything I experienced in Kurdish Jerusalem in context. Through his eyes I understand better what Iraqi Kurdistan once was, what my neighbors must have experienced in making the vast cultural jump to Israel, and who they were in a deep sense. Reading Sabar a new affection for them replaces what was largely an experience of curiosity mixed with non-communication and misunderstandings, mostly of the ordinary landlord-tenant kind, but exacerbated by cross-cultural miscues.
Sabar's narrative is a two level story, personal and historical. At the personal level, it is the story of his own struggles in America with his immigrant father, a double immigrant, from both Kurdistan and the Jerusalem Katamonim where I had lived. By the time of Sabar's birth in 1971, Sabar's father had left the Katamonim and Israel to become a world renowned academic scholar of neo-Aramaic. He was ensconced at UCLA and Sabar would be raised in Los Angeles of the 1970s and 1980s. Their relationship was difficult and the book is the story of Sabar's effort as an American to understand his father, so culturally alien in manner and perspective. It is an old immigrant story, a father from the old country and a son in the new who do not understand each other, and it is beautifully told in a modern manifestation here.
But beyond the personal the book is also an historical narrative of the entire Kurdish immigration and settlement, describing the deep history of the Jewish settlement in Kurdistan, beginning with the original Babylonia exile in 500 BCE, and then moving forward across hundreds of years of little recorded history in a mountainous back country, using fragments of historical texts and family history to tell the story of the entire Kurdish Jewish situation, culminating in the mass exodus of the Kurdish Jewish community to Israel in 1951.
Anyone who has lived in Israel or has relatives (like I do) who were immigrants from the lands of e'dote ha'mizrach (the eastern communities) is familiar with the 1950s ma'aborot (transit camps) and the stories of the struggle, bigotry and discrimination that Middle Eastern Jews experienced at the hands of the Ashkenazi Israeli establishment of the era. Sabar's narrative brings that experience to life. As his family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins) and friends make clear, the dislocation and the poverty were profound, and the 1950s era bigotry was cutting. When Sabar's father received a scholarship at Yale in 1965 it is no surprise that he leaped for the life it promised as an American academic. His siblings however remained in Israel and their stories, explored here in some detail, are more typical of Kurdish immigrants to Israel like my former neighbors in the Katamonim.
But beyond my year in Katamon Vav, the personal parallels between my own life and Sabar's make this book feel intimately familiar to me. He and I share Los Angeles. Ariel Sabar grew up in Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s. I was some ten years older and grew up there in the 1970s. His father was a professor, the son of immigrant parents, who found freedom and professional renown in faraway Los Angeles. My father was also a professor, the son of immigrants (Russian Jews living in the Bronx, New York 1930s) who found freedom and professional renown in faraway Los Angeles. Ariel Sabar struggled more overtly with his father than I did with mine, but in the end we both developed a sense that the thing we were missing in the cultural break created by our parents' movement to the sun-baked sterility of Southern California had something to do with the obscure past our parents left behind. Sabar's need to discover a past seems to have its roots in the dystopian eternal now of West Los Angeles. There is a special ahistorical madness that develops in that California sun. It got to me, and it got to him. In a world without a past, sometimes you have to write one yourself.
Twenty seven years have passed since I lived in Katamon in 1985, a full generation. That's as much time as had already passed since the Kurds had first come to Israel and moved into the Katamon neighborhood when I was there in the mid-1980s. When I returned in 2009 the neighborhood looked perhaps slightly improved in the intervening quarter century. I thought I recognized the house I lived in. (See GoogleMaps link below.) I didn't knock. I couldn't remember the landlord's name. You can't go back. At least, you can't go back in any simple sense. Sabar does a lot of going back in his book, and discovers what remains and what has been washed away forever.
Ariel Sabar's story of searching for his father's past, and thus his own present, is marvelous as journalism, memoir, family history, Jewish and Middle Eastern history, and a beautiful exploration of an uneasy relationship between a father and a son. He does not wrap it up for us in a bow, or pretend that all the differences and breaks are reconciled. He saves the biggest disappointment for the end, and discovers the people who can never be reunited and the breaks that can never be repaired. But he does show us how it is possible to come to terms with the personal and cultural breaks that emerge as people grow into new cultural situations and migrate apart. It's a broken world he seems to say, but it can still all hang together in a new way if we weave the right web of words.
The web of words will bind us together and a livable coherence will emerge, and yet there will be story lines whose conclusions will be forever lost and questions that can never be resolved.
---
Postscript: I lived in one of these low buildings at 25 Antigonus (see GoogleMaps link below, in Katamon Vav (Katamon Six), Jerusalem, Israel, a Kurdish neighborhood. Many of the surrounding buildings have been added on to considerably, growing upward and toward the street, but it appears that my exact address has changed little. Image from circa 2012.
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=25+Reh...
February 17, 2009
I am a sucker for father son stories. My son gave me this book and I thank him for it and would encourage him to read it. In fact, I plan to send it to him tomorrow so that he can take it on vacation next week.
I would divide this book into thirds. The first third is almost like a fairy tale as the author describes what he has learned about his father's family through interviews and historical research. Like the beginning of Hanta Yo, you can't tell what is legend and what is fact. I really enjoyed this part - who knew that there were Jews in Kurdistan speaking Aramaic in the 1950's?
The second third describes his father's life, starting in Kurdistan and ending in Los Angeles. Quite an amazing journey! Also very enlightening and interesting.
The final third includes the author himself, his father's son, and his total rejection of his past, his total immersion in the LA lifestyle, his marriage to a non Jew (not a terrible thing in and of itself, but...) and, in a rejection of tradition that I can never forgive him for, refusing to circumcise his own firstborn son because his wife, a child psychiatrist, is essentially afraid of it. I really didn't like him. He tried to redeem himself with readers and with his father by engaging in what is ultimately a fruitless quest to find a long lost aunt. It really didn't work.
In the end this is an easy to read and interesting story of a family who's story spans three continents and many centuries. The experiences in Israel of this "oriental" family uncovers and highlights some of the basic prejudices in Israeli society that probably still persist today. Give it a read and see what you think. js
I would divide this book into thirds. The first third is almost like a fairy tale as the author describes what he has learned about his father's family through interviews and historical research. Like the beginning of Hanta Yo, you can't tell what is legend and what is fact. I really enjoyed this part - who knew that there were Jews in Kurdistan speaking Aramaic in the 1950's?
The second third describes his father's life, starting in Kurdistan and ending in Los Angeles. Quite an amazing journey! Also very enlightening and interesting.
The final third includes the author himself, his father's son, and his total rejection of his past, his total immersion in the LA lifestyle, his marriage to a non Jew (not a terrible thing in and of itself, but...) and, in a rejection of tradition that I can never forgive him for, refusing to circumcise his own firstborn son because his wife, a child psychiatrist, is essentially afraid of it. I really didn't like him. He tried to redeem himself with readers and with his father by engaging in what is ultimately a fruitless quest to find a long lost aunt. It really didn't work.
In the end this is an easy to read and interesting story of a family who's story spans three continents and many centuries. The experiences in Israel of this "oriental" family uncovers and highlights some of the basic prejudices in Israeli society that probably still persist today. Give it a read and see what you think. js
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 28, 2015
This book tells the story of the author, Ariel Sabar, and his father, Yona. The story begins when Yona is a Jewish boy growing up in Kurdish Iraq in the early twentieth century, a time when the Muslims, Christians, and Jews of the region lived in relative harmony. When religious tensions began to escalate in the Middle East mid-century, teenaged Yona and his family emigrate to Israel, thus forfeiting their Iraqi citizenship. Yona eventually moves to the United States and becomes a leading scholar at UCLA in Aramaic, his native language.
I was really fascinated by the part of the book that took place in Israel. I had never thought much about the difficulties that were encountered as the country’s population grew so quickly with immigrants from so many different regions and nationalities. Yona and his family struggled to make their way in a society dominated by European Jews, facing the stereotypes and prejudices against Kurdish Jews and Middle Eastern Jews in general.
I was very impressed by the Ariel’s personal journey and the way his relationship with his father grew. He spent his teenage years and young adulthood embarrassed by his father, trying to distance himself from his father’s heritage and become a full fledged American. When he has a son of his own, he begins to realize the importance of family legacy, and starts a journey to understand his father’s past. Ariel and Yona travel to Israel and Iraq together to gain insight into the past.
The book was very well balanced between history, politics, and personal narrative. I learned a lot about the history and politics of the time and region. The book is by no means overly political or religious, but there are definitely valuable insights into both. The personal story was very well-written and heartfelt. The author did an excellent job depicting himself, his father and their relationship. I was in tears by the end of the book seeing how their relationship progressed. I debated between four and five stars. I would definitely recommend this book.
I was really fascinated by the part of the book that took place in Israel. I had never thought much about the difficulties that were encountered as the country’s population grew so quickly with immigrants from so many different regions and nationalities. Yona and his family struggled to make their way in a society dominated by European Jews, facing the stereotypes and prejudices against Kurdish Jews and Middle Eastern Jews in general.
I was very impressed by the Ariel’s personal journey and the way his relationship with his father grew. He spent his teenage years and young adulthood embarrassed by his father, trying to distance himself from his father’s heritage and become a full fledged American. When he has a son of his own, he begins to realize the importance of family legacy, and starts a journey to understand his father’s past. Ariel and Yona travel to Israel and Iraq together to gain insight into the past.
The book was very well balanced between history, politics, and personal narrative. I learned a lot about the history and politics of the time and region. The book is by no means overly political or religious, but there are definitely valuable insights into both. The personal story was very well-written and heartfelt. The author did an excellent job depicting himself, his father and their relationship. I was in tears by the end of the book seeing how their relationship progressed. I debated between four and five stars. I would definitely recommend this book.
September 1, 2009
An excellent, award winning biography from a California raised man trying to better understand his father's journey from Kurdistan to Jerusalem to the United States.
Tucked on an island in the river, cut off from the other tribes of Judaism, lived a small but thriving community of Kurdish Jews. Now a part of Iraq, the island town of Zakho found Arabs and Jews living peacefully together, speaking the ancient tongue of Aramaic, until the Jews were forced out of Iraq in the 1950s. Israel absorbed hundreds of thousands of these Sephardic Jews, but they were not welcomed with open arms like the Jews of Europe were. Ariel Sabar's grandparents had a very hard time assimilating, but not so his father Yona, who was just shy of his 13th birthday when they landed in Israel. Yona Sabar thrived in Jerusalem, his fluency in Aramaic proving to be his ticket to a better life, via graduate study at Yale University. Instead of returning to Israel, Yona stayed in the United States, married and moved west to work in the Middle Eastern language department of UCLA. Like his parents, he also had trouble assimilating, finding the United States a very confusing place to live. His children grew up typical California children, embarrassed of their immigrant father.
By traveling back to Zakho to learn about his ancestry, Sabar comes to write a very interesting and readable story. It is a story of maturity and coming of age from the author, a story of the history of a little known group of Jews who evolved so differently from the more well known Jewish tribes, a story of the difficulties of immigrating and assimilating, and a story of tolerance and acceptance - from the Arabs who lived so peacefully with the Jews to the parents who accept their Gentile daughter-in-law to the son who embraces his Judaism but rejects customs that many Jewish parents would find unthinkable.
Tucked on an island in the river, cut off from the other tribes of Judaism, lived a small but thriving community of Kurdish Jews. Now a part of Iraq, the island town of Zakho found Arabs and Jews living peacefully together, speaking the ancient tongue of Aramaic, until the Jews were forced out of Iraq in the 1950s. Israel absorbed hundreds of thousands of these Sephardic Jews, but they were not welcomed with open arms like the Jews of Europe were. Ariel Sabar's grandparents had a very hard time assimilating, but not so his father Yona, who was just shy of his 13th birthday when they landed in Israel. Yona Sabar thrived in Jerusalem, his fluency in Aramaic proving to be his ticket to a better life, via graduate study at Yale University. Instead of returning to Israel, Yona stayed in the United States, married and moved west to work in the Middle Eastern language department of UCLA. Like his parents, he also had trouble assimilating, finding the United States a very confusing place to live. His children grew up typical California children, embarrassed of their immigrant father.
By traveling back to Zakho to learn about his ancestry, Sabar comes to write a very interesting and readable story. It is a story of maturity and coming of age from the author, a story of the history of a little known group of Jews who evolved so differently from the more well known Jewish tribes, a story of the difficulties of immigrating and assimilating, and a story of tolerance and acceptance - from the Arabs who lived so peacefully with the Jews to the parents who accept their Gentile daughter-in-law to the son who embraces his Judaism but rejects customs that many Jewish parents would find unthinkable.
October 2, 2008
I enjoyed learning the history but really savored the personal story that parallels the history. This is a good discussion book to talk abt: 1) child / parent relationships 2) passing culture / traditions down through generations 3) how perceptions of one’s own culture changes through his/her life 5) integration of faiths, 6) integration of people with the same faith but from different areas, among others.
What an interesting story of how the language persisted bc the Kurds became isolated, then the mass exodus of Jews to Israel and the issues surrounding moving a mass amount of people to a new area, the journey to America, and how to preserve a culture while also wanting to integrate to a new country (twice!)
A great read – I looked forward to reading it each night. For details of the book, see the "description".
What an interesting story of how the language persisted bc the Kurds became isolated, then the mass exodus of Jews to Israel and the issues surrounding moving a mass amount of people to a new area, the journey to America, and how to preserve a culture while also wanting to integrate to a new country (twice!)
A great read – I looked forward to reading it each night. For details of the book, see the "description".
March 28, 2009
This book made the tremendous challenges of Arab-Jew relationshipscome alive as the author tells the story of his family and their roots in Kurdish Iraq. Ariel Sabar, the author, is a journalist and begins exploring his father's story from a reporter's point of view, but soon gets caught up in the family dynamics and emotion. The changing roles of women (and men), the desire of youth to embrace all things modern leaving behind the culture and language of their parents, and the changing political status of Kurdish Jews in both Iraq and Israel present pressures on each family member and each responds in his own way.
I really liked this book, a true story, and admire the courage displayed. I was particularly caught up in the parents' hope to keep the children 'true to the faith' as the children moved deeper and deeper into modern culture that the parents didn't understand or embrace.
I really liked this book, a true story, and admire the courage displayed. I was particularly caught up in the parents' hope to keep the children 'true to the faith' as the children moved deeper and deeper into modern culture that the parents didn't understand or embrace.
September 25, 2015
This book combines my cravings in a book; an earnest to know your parent as a person, a place that is part of Iraq (politically the least), Judaism and looking back.
Also, after reading few books (such as this) written by authors who are also journalists I am realizing they contain the perfect balance of literary embellishments and storytelling.
Also, after reading few books (such as this) written by authors who are also journalists I am realizing they contain the perfect balance of literary embellishments and storytelling.
March 16, 2012
One of the best books I have ever read. Recommended to anyone & everyone!
April 5, 2014
A son’s quest for his father’s beginnings and his Jewish heritage takes us back to Kurdish Iraq and the town of Zakho where Jews, Muslims and Christians lived in harmony decades ago and where the ancient language of Aramaic was spoken. Amidst the Middle East conflicts following World War II, Zakho Jews were airlifted to Israel, exposing them to the challenges that the new state of Israel was faced with – making arrangements to house, feed and deal with the thousands of Jews streaming in from all areas of Europe and the Middle East – the magnitude of which they had not anticipated. Yona, Ariel Sabar’s father was one such Jew, who eventually made it across to the U.S. and became a preeminent professor at UCLA focused on the studies of language and folklore of the Jews of Kurdistan. Growing up in Los Angeles, Ariel Sabar turned a deaf ear and eye on his heritage and his father, embarrassed and dismissive of his father’s path and struggles. He wanted nothing to do with his immigrant father, nor the “strange” ways and beliefs his father tried to inculcate in him, preferring to hang out with his hip friends skateboarding, having a good time and ignoring his father whom he began addressing as Yona. It was only after his marriage and the birth of his son, that Ariel began to realize how much his heritage and culture meant to him and his quest to learn about the circumstances that shaped his father’s life began, delving way back into the past…back to the ancient town of Zakho where his father was born. A well-written and absorbing book that not only provides an authentically rich landscape of what it was like for Jews living in Kurdish Iraq, but also takes us into the complex world of a father-son relationship that collides amid the cultural backdrop of old vs. new – the immigrant vs. first generation.
December 9, 2021
Ariel Sabar heeft als kind zich een beetje genegeerd voor zijn vader en diens afkomst. Uiteindelijk heeft hem dit als journalist dit boek laten schrijven over zijn vader en de bijbehorende, dus ook zijn eigen, afkomst. Ieder die dit boek leest hoeft zich volgens mij niet langer te laten overtuigen dat Yona een grote rol heeft ingenomen in het leven van Ariel, als vader. En dat beide mannen ieder op hun manier veel respect voor elkaar en elkaars keuzes hebben. Ariel neemt je mee gedurende het leven van zijn grootouders en zijn vader en hoe anders het leven voor verschillende generaties in andere culturen kan zijn.
Het verhaal van het boek Paradijs van mijn vader is echter niet alleen het levensverhaal van Yona en ook niet alleen het verhaal van hoe een man een stervende taal wil doorgeven aan nieuwe generaties. Nee het verhaal omvat veel meer dan dat. Dit verhaal biedt ons inzichten op het leven van Joden in Koerdistan en Irak. Hoe vredelievend de verschillende culturen naast elkaar konden wonen (en hoe wij daar een voorbeeld aan kunnen nemen), hoe ze de verschrikkingen van de tweede wereldoorlog bespaard zijn, maar hoe ze daarna te maken kregen met het verplichte heilige land Israël en het bijna verplichte vertrek uit het vaderland.
Erg interessant om dat als Europeaan ook eens mee te krijgen. Heel af en toe door alle verschillende plaatsnamen en landen waar ik niet bekend mee ben lastig te volgen. Het verhaal van Yona betrok me heel erg, af en toe vond ik de onderbrekingen over het lot van de joden dan ook wat jammer. Vooral omdat ik zo graag wilde weten hoe het verhaal verder ging. Ariel heeft dan ook een knap staaltje werk neergezet. Niet alleen omdat dit een mooi verhaal is en mooi verwoord, maar vooral omdat het over zijn vader gaat. En hij volgens mij eerlijk is geweest in alle belevenissen en ervaringen met alle respect aan de betrokkenen
Het verhaal van het boek Paradijs van mijn vader is echter niet alleen het levensverhaal van Yona en ook niet alleen het verhaal van hoe een man een stervende taal wil doorgeven aan nieuwe generaties. Nee het verhaal omvat veel meer dan dat. Dit verhaal biedt ons inzichten op het leven van Joden in Koerdistan en Irak. Hoe vredelievend de verschillende culturen naast elkaar konden wonen (en hoe wij daar een voorbeeld aan kunnen nemen), hoe ze de verschrikkingen van de tweede wereldoorlog bespaard zijn, maar hoe ze daarna te maken kregen met het verplichte heilige land Israël en het bijna verplichte vertrek uit het vaderland.
Erg interessant om dat als Europeaan ook eens mee te krijgen. Heel af en toe door alle verschillende plaatsnamen en landen waar ik niet bekend mee ben lastig te volgen. Het verhaal van Yona betrok me heel erg, af en toe vond ik de onderbrekingen over het lot van de joden dan ook wat jammer. Vooral omdat ik zo graag wilde weten hoe het verhaal verder ging. Ariel heeft dan ook een knap staaltje werk neergezet. Niet alleen omdat dit een mooi verhaal is en mooi verwoord, maar vooral omdat het over zijn vader gaat. En hij volgens mij eerlijk is geweest in alle belevenissen en ervaringen met alle respect aan de betrokkenen
January 22, 2018
Author Ariel Sabar grew up in California, but his father's family were Kurdish Jews who came from a mountainous village called Zakho in northern Iraq. The people of this region were among the last to speak the ancient language of Aramaic, and Sabar's father is a pre-eminent scholar in this field.
While life in Zakho was peaceful between the Arabs and the Jews, by the 1950's things began to change. Anti-Semitic behavior was on the rise, and made it's way throughout Iraq. It seemed to hit isolated Zakho late, but eventually the family felt compelled to emigrate to Israel. Once there, they were confronted by a new kind of discrimination. With so many Jews coming to Israel from all over the world, a type of Jewish class system evolved - with Kurdish Jews at the bottom. Ariel's story of his father, Yona, and his rise to respectability through education is so compelling. I'm certain he never thought that his knowledge of Aramaic would be his ticket to success.
This work is a memoir of Sabar, his family history and a fascinating look into the study of Aramaic. I can't say enough good things about it. Not only is it well-researched, but it's incredibly interesting and well-written.
While life in Zakho was peaceful between the Arabs and the Jews, by the 1950's things began to change. Anti-Semitic behavior was on the rise, and made it's way throughout Iraq. It seemed to hit isolated Zakho late, but eventually the family felt compelled to emigrate to Israel. Once there, they were confronted by a new kind of discrimination. With so many Jews coming to Israel from all over the world, a type of Jewish class system evolved - with Kurdish Jews at the bottom. Ariel's story of his father, Yona, and his rise to respectability through education is so compelling. I'm certain he never thought that his knowledge of Aramaic would be his ticket to success.
This work is a memoir of Sabar, his family history and a fascinating look into the study of Aramaic. I can't say enough good things about it. Not only is it well-researched, but it's incredibly interesting and well-written.
November 17, 2009
This book was recommended to me by one of my customers and I was not sure if I want to read it at all. I am glad that I did. It is not an ordinary biography; this book is a window into the world that does not exist anymore. Imagine a "Lost tribe of Israel" left to live peacefully in the midst of an Arab world. Imagine people who were so cut from the modern world that they spoke the Ancient Aramaic in the 20th century, while scholars pronounced this language dead for hundreds of years. It was the language of Jesus, the language used by Assyrian and Persian empires. Isolated and surrounded by Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria the Kurdish Jews kept their culture intact for nearly 3000 years. When they had to leave Iraq for Israel after the 1949 their Arab neighbours cried and mourned their departure. In Israel they were looked upon as barbarians and dimwits without any prospects. Here is a book about the life in exile, about the drama of integration into the new culture and the gap between the fathers and sons. And the most important this book is about the power of language and the past that can destroy the family or bring it together.
February 28, 2017
An interesting book which focuses on Jews who lived in Kurdistan, a part of Iraq. The author yearning to know more about his father, researches his families lives from Kurdistan to Israel and then the United States. The Kurds are a unique group of Jews who spoke Aramaic while others around them spoke Arabic. They dressed differently than other Iraqis but also Eastern European Jews. As the author researches this book through 4 generations, he not only learns about his father and other family members but also about himself and his unique background.
This was a good read although at times, it seemed to get bogged down with too many details. I read this for a book group and do wonder if I would have read it otherwise. I do recommend it for those that are interested in another culture and their way of life as their lives changed and they needed to adjust.
This was a good read although at times, it seemed to get bogged down with too many details. I read this for a book group and do wonder if I would have read it otherwise. I do recommend it for those that are interested in another culture and their way of life as their lives changed and they needed to adjust.
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